Grim Lovelies (Grim Lovelies 1)

Cricket dropped to all fours on the balcony, pushed off, and ran back the other way. Her pace was breakneck and yet she was almost completely silent. She moved like a ghost through a graveyard. Anouk would have felt awestruck if she hadn’t been so focused on not losing sight of the dragonfly.

The insect swooped down over the tables, and Cricket grabbed the iron railing, jumped up and over, and landed gracefully on her feet.

No wonder the Royals used the blue ghost fireflies. They’d be slow and ethereal, lazily lighting the way straight to the folio in question, not doing the mad chaotic dance of the dragonfly. Anouk glanced over her shoulder for a split second. Was Rennar consulting his watch and wondering where the two maids were with his tea?

A chair toppled as Cricket leaped onto one of the tables, and Anouk spun back around. She searched the vast library space with a plunging sense of panic.

“I lost it!” she gasped.

“I haven’t,” Cricket answered, her attention focused eight feet off the ground near a set of shelves. She leaped on one of the golden ladders and climbed swiftly. “It’s fast. Holà, Anouk, give me a shove.”

Anouk ran to the ladder and pushed it on its rolling tracks as Cricket focused intently. “Faster! No, wait, it’s going the other way. Back, back, back!”

Anouk heaved the ladder in the other direction.

“Stop!” Cricket yelled sharply.

Anouk dug her heels into the floor, braking the ladder so fast that Cricket nearly lost her balance. But her reflexes were sharp; she climbed another rung and then held her hand over a dusty red folio seven shelves up. Anouk could just make out the dragonfly resting on its spine.

“That’s it,” Anouk breathed. “The beastie spell.”

Cricket shooed away the dragonfly, took down the folio, and hugged it to her chest as though it were some living, delicate thing. The blue ghost fireflies in their glass cases pulsed steadily, and as rain pelted the windows harder, Anouk once more felt overcome by that underwater sensation. Cricket climbed down, and Anouk took the folio from her with shaking hands. Such a simple thing. Bound red casing. A single page within. And yet it felt heavy in her arms.

“People are going to write songs about this theft,” Cricket boasted. “Wait and see. Songs.”

Anouk’s fingers itched to open the folio. She wanted to silently mouth the words that had made them. And yet it was already growing darker outside. A wet, stormy night was coming. She sniffed the air—?she smelled citrus and onion and, oddly, it made her thi

nk of Luc.

She couldn’t resist. She cracked open the folio. A single page. Here was all that separated them from a lifetime of humanity. She’d cast magic before—?why not now? Zola herself had said beasties contained a vast magical ability, so why must a witch cast the spell and not her?

A crow suddenly flapped against the outside window, cawing in sharp calls. “Time to go,” Cricket warned.

Anouk ripped out the spell and rolled it into a tight cylinder that she stuffed into the hollow shaft of her broom. To even attempt the spell, she’d need herbs, wings, blood . . .

The crow pecked sharply at the window outside. “We’d better get that tea,” she said. “And see if Viggo’s been turned into someone’s Christmas dinner yet.”

Chapter 25

Eight and a Half Hours of Enchantment Remain

They dared not run. Maids don’t run, Anouk reminded herself. And that’s what they had to be now, furniture with legs, faceless girls concerned only with dust. But she clutched the broom hard in defiance.

Maids didn’t steal either. Or cast magic, or rescue idiot witch’s boys, and yet here she was. They’d done it! She held their very lives in her hands, hidden in the hollow broom shaft. What would Beau say when she pressed the spell against the windshield? They’d fly back to Montélimar as if the car had wings. Let the crows chase them. Let the whispers and rumors nip at their heels. It didn’t matter. As the stars came out, they would stand in the Château des Mille Fleurs’ gardens, and Mada Zola would take these stolen words and make them human forever, one by one. Wherever Luc was, he would feel the magic of it too. And she’d find him. She would. If she could steal this spell from Castle Ides, she could do anything.

Little dust bunny, Luc would say, and he’d lick his thumb and wipe away the perpetual streak of dust on her cheek. You saved me when I thought you were the one in need of saving.

She had to lower the lace veil to hide the smile on her face. “Which way is the kitchen?”

Cricket discreetly rolled up her sleeve and consulted the map on her forearm. “The hallway on the right, beneath the arch, second door on the left. Unless it’s past four o’clock. Then it’s the third door.”

An ancient grandfather clock sat beneath an arch, and Anouk checked the hour, but for once she didn’t feel shackled to its ticking and tocking. They had the spell. They had enough time for Mada Zola to cast it—?though only just. All that was left now was to warn Viggo, get to the elevator and down to Beau.

The familiar aroma of baking bread and garlic led her to the kitchen. The penthouse kitchen was massive, and so crowded with cooks and maids and butlers that she and Cricket had to squeeze their way in. Steam rose from large pans on monstrous twin ovens. A gaggle of girls rolled dough, stamping Rennar’s crest into the crust. Cricket slowed, uncertain of the unspoken rules of a kitchen, but Anouk threw herself into the mess, expertly ducking pans, swerving around butlers carrying crates of wine. She spotted a stack of copper trays and grabbed one, hunted up a teakettle, sniffed out the éclairs, and arranged them prettily on the tray. She pulled a sharp knife from the wooden butcher’s block, hesitating only briefly before setting it next to the éclairs. Her hands knew the motions by heart: boil water, collect sugar cubes and cream, scoop out the tea—?

She paused at the row of labeled tea canisters.

Lavender.